Review: Go
THE BOD COUPLE
Hero and heroine flash their gym-toned physiques, but that can’t save the dumb film they’re stuck in.
OCT 7, 2007 – AFTER WATCHING THE LATEST UNDERWHELMER from the Ram Gopal Varma Factory – this one’s titled Go, though, if there was any justice in this world, it should have been called Go Anywhere But Into A Multiplex That’s Playing Go – I’m quite convinced that Nisha Kothari and her gun-toting goons are holding hostage a key member of the Varma family. “Cast anyone else as heroine in your next production,â€? she probably warns the once-hot filmmaker each time he plans a film, “and… dishkyaoon.â€? If there’s another explanation for why – besides the undeniable pots of money she shaves off the wardrobe budget – she’s become a fixture in the Factory productions, I’d like to hear of it.
She plays Vasundhara in Go, and in a desperate early attempt at character delineation, director Manish Srivastava has her ploughing through a textbook titled Principles of Physics. But for all the smarts Vasundhara displays through the rest of this supposed action-thriller, she may as well have had her nose buried in the latest Cosmo. Go is one of those movies where the heroine is just a pouting, squealing sidekick, a bimbette whose main job is to look good while running in slo-mo – though, in deference to our equal opportunity times, there’s an equal amount of shirtless, slo-mo running done by the hero Abhay (gym-toned newcomer Gautam Gupta, tinseltown’s latest exhibit in the contention that you cannot dream of becoming a star these days unless the audience can count up to a half-dozen in the ab pack.)
Just how senseless and tasteless is their love story? Allow me to present the example of the scene where Abhay enters Vasundhara’s bedroom in his T-shirt and briefs. This state of partial undress is because he’s there looking for naada for his pyjama. (The naada, evidently, is an unknown construct in the male universe; only women, apparently, stock the stuff by the cupboardful.) Let’s get beyond the obvious question – did he walk all the way to her apartment in just his undies? – and see where this scene goes. (And you know where this scene is going, right? It’s simply a Gen Y update of the bit in our old films, where the hero would, on his way to work, find the topmost button of his shirt missing, and the heroine would stand in front of him and stitch it in, lovingly biting off the tail of thread that remained.)
So Vasundhara finds the naada and tosses it to Abhay, and he protests that she has to thread it through the pyjama. (I know this has already begun to sound ridiculous, but bear with me; it gets better – or worse, depending on how you choose to see it.) After she complies, you think he’d just pull the darned pyjama on and leave – but no! He insists she has to help him put it on. (I mean, is this man capable of doing anything? He appears to be a walking, talking reminder of how Lyndon B Johnson described Gerald Ford: “He can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.â€?) And so she kneels in front of his bare, inverted-V legs, and her mother chooses this exact moment to walk in and… you can imagine the rest. I wouldn’t have minded this scene had it simply been played for laughs – raunchy laughs, as in the American Pie movies – but it’s all staged so cheesily, you don’t know where to look.
At some point, mercifully, this boy-girl love story gives way to a boy-and-girl-on-the-run scenario – not that this section is any better, but at least you know he’s in pants and will have no foreseeable need for naada – when Abhay and Vasundhara get hold of a tape that incriminates the Chief Minister of murder. Soon, they have to fend off an assortment of bad guys – from Kay Kay Menon in a straw hat (who hopefully got paid a bomb) to a hairy lout who hops on one leg, a gun in one hand, a Five Star bar in the other (and no, I’m not making any of this up). It all plays as hysterically as it sounds, and towards the end, the director actually seems to be going for full-throttle farce, touchingly unaware that that’s what we’ve been subjected to all along. By the time Rajpal Yadav turns up as a Michael Jackson clone, it’s practically a subliminal message to the audience: Beat It!
Copyright ©2007 The New Sunday Express
Surprised you managed to sit through this one Bhai, this looked just atrocious…hopefully this is the last of Ramu’s backlog films!
This seems to be a remake of an old Verma directed Telugu film (this was before he left the Telugu Film industry in a huff, pointing out andhrites’ lack of appreciation for his films) Anaganaga Oka Roju. That film was a success, not due to the permormances of the lead pair (Chakravarthy and Verma’s old muse Urmila) but due to the cameo and comic relief provided by a superb and memorable Brahmanandam. And thankfully Verma hadnt thought of the Naada scenes back then.
Its such a pity to see that Verma (post his Aag) and his Factory cant come up with anything better these days!
I am sure this was one of those days when you hated your job, Baradwaj!
A typo up there! “…if there was any justice in this world..” The word “world” should be “word.”
anon: I think “if there was any justice in this world” seems about right. Baradwaj is implying that there is no justice in this world. Because, if there was, then we would have been forewarned with a title that reads: Go Anywhere But Into A Multiplex That’s Playing Go. Right, Mr. Brangan?
@ anon: “A typo up there! “…if there was any justice in this world..â€? The word “worldâ€? should be “word.â€?”
I don’t think so!
@ brangan
So you sort of agree with Taran Adarsh this time, it seems. Must be really bad, if everybody thinks so.
Did “Manorama – Six Feet Under” still didn’t land in Chennai? I’m quite curious about that film, since Abhay seems to be the one person of the younger generation in the Deol family, who inherited the “Dharmendra-Gene”. And he seems to have quite a good hand in choosing his films.
RGV keeps introducing new faces, but none of them stick these days. AFAIK, Urmila is the last person to break out of the RGV stable as a success and as a good actor. Vivek Oberoi was on the cusp a few years ago of being a big star, but nothing big came of it. People like Nisha Kothari, Mohit Ahlawat, Gautam Gupta, etc. seem to be nothing but glorified models.
Akshay: Backlog film? In what way? “Surprised you managed to sit through this…” What choice do I have?
Satya: Yup, others have pointed out the Anaganaga Oka Roju reference too. And yup, this was one of the lows…
anon: I did mean “world”, in the sense that Sagarika has explained below.
bollyaddict: Nope, still no signs of Manorama. And now that the DVD is out, I don’t see a theatrical release in the offing.
Ravi K: I have my reservations about urmila being a “good actor,” but yes, she was the last to build a successful career with the help of an RGV launchpad. Though now I guess Vivek is having some sort of second innings. Shootout at Lokhandwala was a hit, and now he’s signed the hindi remake of 7-G Rainbow Colony, with Selvaraghavan directing…
brangan: I haven’t seen this one yet, thank God. To that extent, justice does prevail in this world
. Just this once, I forgive your playing off of the title of my all-time favorite Jack Lemmon-Walther Matthau ’60s runaway comedy hit (although this one doesn’t obviously deserve such exalted association even by way of a superb pun), because you had me squealing with laughter at your marvelous attempt at injecting some brains at least into the review of an obviously brainless exercise in movie-making. If I’m ever a captive audience to this movie, e.g., strapped in an airline seat some 50,000 ft up in the sky for 15 hours straight with no other go but “Go”, then I at least have this funny funny review to remind me to try and see the humor in parts (if only to cry out loud) instead of dwelling on the horror of having to leave my brains behind, at the security check-in.
Your description of (I’m “guessing” buxom) Vasundhara ploughing through a textbook titled Principles of Physics instantly brought to mind another brain-and-acting-skills-deprived bombshell (this one from Hollywood) who paraded around as (you guessed it) nuclear scientist Christmas Jones in the 1999 Bond flick “The World is Not Enough” (I’m sure she had the guys crying “Heaven” when she swam around in that tight white t-shirt in a sinking submarine right after her hilariously inept delivery of the line: “I’ve got to get this bomb back or somebody’s going to have my butt!” — or something along those lines). Seems to me (from your write-up) that RGV saw a similar, perfect pneumatic bubblehead in Ms.Kothari (probably as close to a cartoon character as he could get without casting Jessica Rabbit) to “liven up” Vasundhara’s role in this movie!
And that part where you write about our hero-with-the-6-pack-abs turning quadriplegic the moment he experiences a pants-down “naada” conundrum that he hopes his lady-love-to-be would succesfully “rope” him out of … that’s another truly laugh-out-loud moment in this review. And you tie it all together oh-so-nicely with that last line!
Do keep ‘em coming!
Hmmm.. I say, that’s pretty cool.
Satham Podathey ? – whay are you quiet abt that movie ?
Please ‘Go’ to those kind of movies
Baddy, this review was genuinely so funny!!
Sagarika: Even as in-flight entertainment, this would be a no-’Go’ . Oh, and Christmas Jones was hilarious, though I wasn’t quite thinking of her when I wrote this
Mumbai Ramki: That was a laugh… To paraphrase Usilai Mani, Nanna sonnel pon-’Go’
Shankar: Thanks man.
This is a bit off-track, but the DVD for Manorama is out already? I watched it in a packed multiplex last night, and thought it absolutely stunning. Can’t wait to see your review of it.
BR, 7GRC in Hindi? Vivek oberoi? Wasnt Ravikrishna’s Yuck quotient a key character of the movie? I know Vivek isnt really hot in Hindi but how are they going to bring in the Yuck Factor?- Vivek’s not that bad !
What I meant by “backlog” film was that this is one that was initially slated to release JUNE 2006 It got delayed for some reasons, and the next date was early 07 which is when the posters and initial teaser promos came out. RGV along the way lost interest with the SHIVA remake, NISHABD, RGV KI AAG, DARLING and SARKAR RAAJ that this one was lying in the cans for quiet a while until now.
A.Shah
Rahul: “Packed multiplex”? Where? From press reports, it dooesn’t appear to have done well anywhere.
raj: Who knows? Maybe they’re changing the story a bit.
Akshay: Ah – thanks.
This is a crack up of a review…had me in splits!! =))